A glass wine jar for a drum, women on stilts to welcome us, and a man with a long unwieldy Alpine horn that he suddenly picks up and starts to hurl jazzy notes into a bright blue Alpine sky – what a way to start a celebration! Above us a glass dome by contemporary Swiss […]
Rèze
Tsampéhro finds its stride
A lingering autumn day of sunshine and the option to dine outside will put anyone in a good mood, but I don’t think this is the reason that the newly released Tsampéhro wines I tasted Monday were good – it was the best of the tastings I’ve done of these wines, which came onto the […]
Electus and Eclat, well on the road
“A vine adds leaves, then flowers, then grapes. But wine goes in the opposite direction, from the fruit back to the soil.” Damien Carruzzo, oenologist, Valais Mundi Provins made a daring gamble a decade ago and it is starting to pay off. Switzerland’s largest winery, the Valais cantonal cooperative, decided that as part of its […]
Rare grapes, do we love their wines?
What do rare wines from old and new grapes taste like, and should we love them? See also: The strange world of rare grapes Discovery wines Serge Heymoz of Cave les Sentes sums up my feeling for many of the old varieties I’ve tasted, when he speaks of Rèze, a wine that has been around […]
The strange world of rare grapes
Why would you drink wine from grapes you’ve never heard of unless you’re on your honeymoon or an exotic vacation? Just when you thought you were starting to understand wine because you could rattle off the names of a few grape varieties and even briefly describe the kind of wines they give, someone gets excited […]